Bread

There is a lot of nonsense spoken about the unsatisfactory nature of a life of plenty, with money to burn: how happiness is at a premium among the rich and cosseted and the corrosive effect of materialism. This sermon points out that being rich might not be so bad after all – but that spiritual poverty is the real possibility to be avoided.

“ Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. “

Bread Sermon:

How would you like to win the lottery?

What do you think,

when you read of some company director

getting a golden - handshake of

five million pounds?

How do you react to a top footballer

getting a new contract for

£100, 000 a week?

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Do you envy them?

The dot-com millionaires?

The management buy-out fat cats?

The Lottery Rollover Jackpot winners?

Do you envy them ?

The glitzy footballers’ wives,

the 20 million dollar a movie film stars?

The rich who swell the pages of “ Hello” magazine?

Do you envy them?

I do!

Sometimes…

if I’m honest.

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Sometimes I wonder

what it would be like,

what difference it would make.

I don’t think I’d be one of those who

“ Won’t let the money change my life!”

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But, sure,

we can understand why people,

noses pressed against the window,

hunger for the lucky break,

he get-rich-quick scheme.

“Just a few million to tide us over.

That’s all we would need

to get by

to make life good.”

And we glance enviously in the direction of

the people who’ve “got it all.”

That longing is reinforced by the “isms”

that try to convince us that here is where

happiness resides…

Consumerism!

Materialism!

Capitalism!

All attempt to give some kind of philosophical respectability

to the hunger in us for stuff, for things,

for more

“Things that money can buy”

“Experiences that money can buy.”

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From time to time, the church has sounded a warning:

indicated that maybe money isn’t everything!

That there are elements to happiness

that money can’t buy.

And the poor little rich girls

And the spend, spend, spend

Self- destructive billionaire

Pools winner,

the E- type jag crashing coke-sniffing, home-destroying

rich playboy who wrecks his life -

these are paraded as a stern warning to us all

that those who put their trust in wealth

as the source of their happiness

are buying a pup.

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Now, while the record shows

that there have been unhappy millionaires,

and that some of those who aspire

to great wealth - and get it,

are actually a bit disappointed by what they find,

-the reality is

and the yachts in the marinas of Monaco seem to suggest the truth is…unpalatable to the purists though it be –